The present invention relates to an ink-supplying container for an ink jet printer, especially to a continuously supplying ink container of an attachable and detachable type.
An ink jet printer generally utilizes an ink cartridge containing a certain amount of ink as an ink supply source. For users who frequently print large numbers of pages, frequent replacement of the ink cartridge is necessary and inconvenient. One solution for reducing the frequency of the ink cartridge is a relatively large container used for containing ink. Ink from the larger container is directly supplied to the ink cartridge or the print head via a tube. This solution has effectively solved the problem of replacing the ink cartridge frequently. However, a color printer may require a four-color, six-color, or seven-color ink cartridge depending on different design requirements. Therefore, the prior art requires four, six or seven containers separated from each other. The separated containers contain ink liquid of different colors. The advantage of this solution is only one set of manufacturing moulds are required. However, the containers are separated from each other which makes this solution inconvenient to use.
In order to solve the problem described above, another solution has been proposed which uses a unitary ink cartridge. This solution is convenient to use, but the manufacturers must produce several sets of the moulds, such as a four-color unitary mould, six-color unitary mould, seven-color unitary mould and so on. Although this solution is convenient to use, it is relatively expensive to manufacture and use.